Stanley Insler's reconstruction of pre-Vedic Indo-Aryan religion draws on comparative evidence from the Avestan-Iranian materials, the Mitanni treaty evidence, and internal Ṛgvedic stratification. His picture: a pastoralist religious orientation that predates both the Ṛgvedic period's canonical compositions and the later Kuru-Pañcāla state's elaborate Vedic-Brahmanical complex. Samuel adopts Insler's reconstruction as the working description of Phase 1 Vedic religion.1
The reconstruction matters because it lets us see what the proto-Vedic religious situation looked like before the Kuru-Pañcāla state project transformed it. Without the reconstruction, the elaborate Phase 2 Vedic-Brahmanical religion looks primordial. With it, the elaborate religion becomes visible as historical project built on simpler pastoralist substrate.
Insler's picture has several specific elements:
Pastoralist economy: small villages and settlements with mixed pastoralist-agricultural economy, heavily oriented toward cattle-herding. The cattle-economy substrate is visible in Vedic vocabulary (the term go for cow appears in many compound terms) and in inherited Indo-European parallels.
Tribal political organization: chieftains (rājan) ruling individual tribes. The chieftains were expected to protect their subjects, judge in disputes, and maintain proper relations with the deities. Different tribes had different chieftains; no overarching political unification.
War-leader as temporary role: a warlord chosen temporarily during conflict. The warlord was associated with the deity Indra (war-leader prototype); the peacetime ruler was associated with the deities Mitra and Varuṇa (peace-sovereigns). The role-distinction was real and Indo-Iranian-shared.
Outdoor ritual under open sky: the primary religious practice. A sacred space was delimited; grass was spread to provide seats for the deities; a fire was lit. Food was offered to the deities; on important occasions, animals were sacrificed and soma was prepared.
Hotr-priest as ritual specialist: a priest (Sanskrit hotr, Avestan haotar) recited praise-hymns to accompany the offerings. The hymns we know as Ṛgvedic verses are the surviving products of this praise-hymn tradition.
Self-identification as ārya: the population identified itself as ārya, with the term meaning something like "hospitable" or "cultivated" in the original sense (later evolving to mean noble/exalted).
The religion is hospitable-pastoralist in its operational orientation. It is not yet the state-political project the Kuru-Pañcāla complex will become.
A specific feature of Insler's reconstruction: in pre-Vedic Indo-Aryan religion, Mitra and Varuṇa were as important as Indra. The triad operated as full pantheon; the war-leader (Indra) had role but was not dominant. The later Ṛgvedic Indra-dominance is a Kuru-Pañcāla-era development, not the original Indo-Aryan situation.
This is significant because the Iranian-Avestan tradition shows the divergent development of the same shared starting point. In Iran, Ahura Mazda (likely a development of Vedic Varuṇa) becomes supreme, and the Vedic devas are demonized as daevas. Insler reads this as a parallel divergence: the Indo-Aryan branch went toward Indra-dominance under Kuru-Pañcāla political pressure; the Iranian branch went toward Varuṇa-Ahura-Mazda-dominance under Zarathustrian reform. The shared starting point was the more pluralistic Mitanni-attested pantheon.
The Mitanni evidence (1360 BCE) supports Insler's reconstruction directly. The treaty lists Mitra, Varuṇa, Indra, and the Nāsatyas as witnesses, with no apparent hierarchical organization. This is the pre-divergence pantheon as Insler reconstructs it.
Connects to Vedic Religion Two-Phase Development — Insler reconstructs Phase 1. Connects to Mitanni Treaty 1360 BCE — the empirical anchor for Insler's reconstruction. Connects to Witzel Kuru-Pañcāla State — the Phase 2 development that transforms the substrate Insler describes.
Soma is a useful case for Insler's reconstruction. In Phase 1, soma was a pressed plant juice — specific botanical identity uncertain (Ephedra is current best guess) — prepared and consumed in ritual context. Insler's reconstruction places it among ritual offerings to the deities, with the consumption producing a state of religious-ecstatic engagement.
In Phase 2, soma's botanical identity is lost.2 The plant is no longer identified or used in ritual. The ritual continues — but with substitute substances that do not produce the pharmacological-experiential effect the original substance had. Soma becomes symbolic-ritual category, with the original experiential basis gone.
The transition from Phase 1 to Phase 2 visible in the soma case: a substrate religious practice with concrete operational basis becomes ritual-symbolic elaboration after the operational basis is lost. The continuity is preserved in the ritual; the original content is not.
You are reading a Ṛgvedic hymn (or analysis of one) and trying to understand its religious context. Default questions:
What stratum of Indo-Aryan religion does the hymn reflect? Some Ṛgvedic material is closer to the Phase 1 pre-Vedic substrate (older language, simpler ritual references). Some is closer to the Phase 2 Kuru-Pañcāla developments (newer language, elaborated ritual context).
Does the hymn invoke Mitra-Varuṇa-Indra-Aśvins together as roughly-equal pantheon? Or does it emphasize Indra at the expense of the others? The pantheon-balance is a marker for stratum.
What kind of ritual context does the hymn fit? Outdoor open-sky offering with hotr-priest reciting? Or elaborate śrauta ritual with multiple priests? The ritual-context is a marker for stratum.
The discipline of stratum-identification lets you read the Vedic textual material with appropriate historical layering.
Insler's reconstruction is one of several available; Witzel's parallel work focuses more on linguistic-stylistic stratification; Jamison and Witzel's recent collaborative work integrates multiple approaches. The convergence on the basic shape of pre-Vedic substrate is substantial.
The tension is about specific details. How extensive was the early geographic distribution? Was the Phase 1 / Phase 2 transition gradual or punctuated? How did the Iranian-Indo-Aryan divergence happen — through political-religious reform or through other processes?
The reconstruction of pastoralist religion has structural parallels with other pastoralist-religious reconstruction projects.
The handshake to history identifies parallel pastoralist-religious traditions across cultures. The Mongol pre-Buddhist religious orientation (documented in the vault's Weatherford material); the early Israelite pre-monarchical religion; various Central Asian and African pastoralist religions ethnographically documented. The insight neither domain alone produces: pastoralist religious orientations share recurring features (deity pantheon for cattle/grass/water/storm; outdoor ritual under open sky; war-leader / peace-sovereign deity-role distinction; ritualists who travel with the herds rather than serving fixed temples). The Indo-Aryan case is one instance of a general pattern.
The handshake to psychology addresses the developmental implications. Religious life in pastoralist mobility context shapes subject-psychology differently than religious life in settled-agricultural-state contexts. The vault's psychology corpus on identity-formation and environmental shaping can analyze this. The insight neither domain alone produces: the specific psychological orientation of pastoralist-religious subjects (mobility, livestock-relationship, weather-attention, warrior-readiness) is recoverable from the religious orientation; the psychology and religion are mutually constitutive.
Treating Insler's reconstruction as definitive overstates current scholarly certainty. The reconstruction is well-supported but inferential.
Treating the pre-Vedic substrate as primitive precursor would misframe. The Phase 1 religion was a complete religious orientation, not preparation for Phase 2.
Strongest evidence: comparative Indo-Iranian material; Mitanni treaty attestation; internal Ṛgvedic stratification.
Open questions: How wide was the geographic distribution of the Phase 1 substrate? What did its non-Indo-Aryan-speaking neighbors' religious practice look like?
Sharpest implication: Vault discussions of "Vedic religion" should distinguish Phase 1 (Insler's reconstruction) from Phase 2 (Witzel's Kuru-Pañcāla state-construction).
Generative questions: